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ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 



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Given Through 



MRS. CORA L. V. RICHMOND, 

Pastor of the Church of the Soul. 



* * * * 



Synopsis of an Addi'ess Given by the Guide of Mi'S. Cora 
I(. V. Richmond, at the Regular Service of the Church 
of the Soul, Sunday, February 2, Hall 309, Masonic Tem- 
ple, Chicago, 111. 



The Church of the Soul holds Services in Hall 309, Masonic Temple. 
Every Sunday at 1 1 A. n.; Sunday School at 10 A. a 



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SYNOPSIS OF THE ADDRESS GIVEN BY ABRAHAM 

LINCOLN THROUGH THE INSTRUMENTALITY 

OF MRS. CORA L. V. RICHMOND 



At the Regular Services of the Church of the Soul, Sun- 
day, Feb. 13, 1910, Hall 309, Masonic 
Temple, Chicago. 



With, a brief introduction by the President of the 
Board of Trustees of that church — Mr. Waldo Dennis. 

Introduction. 

It was Sunday, Feb. 13, and therefore Lincoln birth- 
day-Sunday. The regularly announced subject for the 
day, "Apollyon, the Destroyer," had been postponed, as 
I supposed, that the opportunity might not be lost of 
saying a few of the many things his life and character 
would naturally suggest. But suddenly the speaker an- 
nounced, "What is to be said to you on this occasion will 
not be of Lincoln, but by him." I was thrilled with joy 
and expectation. 

Even as a boy, at the end of the rebellion, as I 
pored over the life of Lincoln a great love went out to 
him. And again a® I read what Miss Tarbell has gath- 
ered from the four quarters of the earth, my love con- 
secrated itself to him anew. Through my adoration 
for him, I suffered with him in all his crushing, tortur- 
ing load of anxiety he carried as President, and I re- 
joiced with him in his relief and gratitude, when came 
the final triumph. 

And how I enjoyed every personal fact about his boy- 
hood, the boyhood that was a prophetic revelation of 
the man, boy and man alike, characterized by a kindness 
that was angelic, and by an integrity that was as simple 
and natural as it was unswerving; the unmistakably di- 
vine life that was sent for the crisis needing his sweet 
patience and great wisdom. 

To me Lincoln was the greatest man of our country, 
1 



its second savior, commissioned from on high to redeem 
it from its sin of chattel slavery. He was my soul's 
adoration. And now I was to be vouchsafed this great 
blessed privilege, the privilege of hearing Lincoln de- 
clare himself. That what he would say would be both 
profound and vital, I was very sure. 

And dear reader, when you have perused the follow- 
ing reproduction of What he said, perhaps you will un- 
derstand the satisfaction that was mine. My spirit wait- 
ed, expectant, eager to meet his>, in the inspiration which 
it was his to give. 



In a line written to Mrs. Richmond the day following 
the address, Mr. Dennis wrote: "I am full of to-day's 
services; the discourse by the dear Lincoln — and my 
heart goes out to you for making it possible, and to him 
for the inspiration; isn't it wonderful! An instance of 
the highest mental phenomena known to the world." 

Address. 

"With malice toward none, with charity for all" 

"My country is the world, my countrymen are all 
mankind." 

In the larger life of the spirit I would say: My 
country is the Universe, my countrymen are all iS'Ouls. 

Hero worship has ever been the curse of the past; 
people have mistaken the source of power and achieve- 
ment; have substituted the human for the divine. One 
must not mistake his own part in the great fulfillments 
of the Infinite purpose. 

The great tide of loving and grateful remembrance 
must reach one even in the life of higher realities than 
earth can give; but the day of human birth and death 
are of small account compared with the life that lies 
between and beyond them. 

Grateful for all that the human heart hath given, in 
the personal and collective remembrance of the day just 
past, let us turn from the personal to the national, from 
the national to the universal view of what the century 
has wrought for humanity. 

Those who have followed the history of the nation 
that led up to the struggle between the North and the 
South, will readily grasp the idea that the signs indicat- 
ing the approach of that conflict were portentous and 
many; long before the immediate cause was precipi- 
tated upon the nation; that the very existence of chat- 

2 



tel slavery, presumably protected by the constitution, 
was a perpetual menace to the existence of a representa- 
tive government, and that the extension of slavery into 
the then new state® of the southwest meant the imme- 
diate forfeiture of the liberty that had been gained. 
When, therefore, the struggle in Missouri, Kansas, Ne- 
braska, resulted in the admission of those states without 
slavery, or with compromise, it meant the approach of the 
final truggle of the South to gain supremacy. 

A life-long abhorrence of chattel slavery, a few occa- 
sions for aiding in the struggle in the southwestern and 
border States, a wisih that somehow and sometime in the 
near future the great blot would be removed from the 
escuitcheon of the nation, this was all the preparation the 
one addressing you had for the duties into which he 
was ushered by the great swirl of that political crisis; 
but others there were who were more perfectly pre- 
pared by years of experience and steadfast maintenance 
of the rights of all people to "life, liberty and the pur- 
suit of happiness." 

It was necessary, at that juncture, that one be chosen 
to represent the side of the nation that had been newly 
awakened to the perils of the hour, who was not known; 
whose name had not been so closely identified with the 
struggle in the past between the slaveholders and the 
advocates of the abolition of slavery. It was thought 
that the one so chosen couldi give no offense to either sec- 
tion of the country. But the very fact that the newly 
awakened Republican party succeeded, the very fact that 
the victory was with the non-slaveholding North, made 
the South aware that slavery, as a political power, was 
doomed. From that time the subsequent results were 
inevitable. 

Perhaps you are aware into what a great and goodly 
company the results of that election irshered the almost 
unknown President: The Congress of the United States" 
held at that time the flower of American statesmanship; 
they were the strong hosts sent on in that hour of the 
nation's need ,to upbear the hands of him who might 
have faltered, but for their great and wise patriotism: 
Sumner, who had already tasted the violence born of 
slavery; Wilson, Wade, Howard; but why name them? 
Their work bespoke their great insight and wonderful 
ability to cope with the rapidly culminating events. Let 
no one suppose that any other than that master mind of 



statesmanship — William H. Seward — tliat mind who 
diared to say that if the Constitution of the United States 
made slavery legal there was a "higher law" that made 
Freedom under the Constitution the inalienable right of 
every man born in this; fair land. The cabinet was 
chosen from the intrepid and far-seeing ones who gave 
to the one entrusted with executive power the strength 
of a mighty people, aroused as never before in the his- 
tory of the country. 

Not only were there in both houses of Congress the 
best minds that the nation could at that time produce, 
and in the cabinet the finest ability and the true spirit 
of statesmanship, but there was ever the unfailing help 
from above — the guidance not born of human councils, 
or of earth; the Infinite Helper. There were His mes- 
sengers — not dimly recognized as angelis afar off — but 
veritable advisors and friends to whom one might turn 
with confidence and trust; for one can never seek, with 
the highest motive, for guidance, that the guidance does 
not come. 

It is ever oppression that strilves the first blow — 
not only in the act of oppresssion, but when brought 
face to face with Truth and Freedom, strikes the first 
deadly blow to slay. 

Slavery was doomed; and slavery struck the first 
blow at the heart of the nation. You know what fol- 
lowed, but perhaps you do not know how the human 
brain faltered and the human hand hesitated*, and the 
human heart was wrung with angiiis'h beoause of the 
inability to cope with the mighty problems of that hour. 
War! That was the fearful thing that had been thrust 
upon us. When you praise overmuch the feeblest man 
of that day — the man who would have failed but for 
the statesmen whom the people sent to sustain him, 
please remember that suecess crowned the Cause of the 
nation as the Cause of freedom, and that equal ability 
and perhaps equal sincerity in another cause, not of free- 
dom, might not have led to victory. 

Then, when the war was upon us and there had been 
defeat, the army and the people constituted the hosts 
that were led to victory — not by the President but by 
one of the most modest, unassuming and peace-loving 
men whom the world has ever seen — Ulysses S. Grant — 
without whom there could have been no day of final 
emancipation, no victory for the nation. 

4 



All this is now past history; yet the one addressing 
you remained long enough before being summoned from 
the mortal form to realize, in some degree, the dangers 
into which the nation had been plunged during that 
dread ordeal of war and the almost equally dread ordeal 
of victory and peace. 

Chattel slavery was removed, but the negro was not 
free from the persecutions and abuses of an enslaving 
dominant race, nor had he yet overcome the long con- 
tinued influence of servitude. There was much — oh, so 
much, to do — the problem of reconstruction, the proper 
balance between justice and mercy. Have these prob- 
lems yet been solved? With all the rapid advancement 
of the negro in education and preparation for citizen- 
ship, is there equality and protection for that race before 
the law throughout this country? 

Other slaveries there are, imminent then, precipitate 
now. Perhaps you will recall the last message ever sent 
to the Congress of your country by the President of that 
time: Sounds of war had been silenced by the loud ac- 
claim of triumph and peace; your victorious armies had 
entered the conquered capital of the erstwhile Southern 
Confederacy; the flag of the nation floated over the 
entire country; not yet united but ready for recon- 
struction. There were other slaveries; in that mei&sage 
to the especial Congress, convened to consider the 
problems of peace — the new peace — there was one sen- 
tence, a warning as well as a prophecy. 

"I would warn the laboring man against the ever 
encroaching power of wealth." Alas, that warning, 
justified then, has been more than realized in the years 
that have intervened; and you are upon the very verge 
— nay, you are in the very midst of the conflict. For 
the time labor is silenced, or perhaps deadened in per- 
ception, by the newly awakened activity of the govern- 
ment in bringing to the bar of justice the greatest of- 
fenders against the people — the gigantic trusts and mo- 
nopolies. 

The secret of all this financial power and combination 
is not new; Andrew Jackson met and overcame it once 
when the Republic was comparatively new. During the 
war between the North and South the one addressing 
you wrote to the Senator who was afterward chairman 
of the reconstruction committee. "I have more difficulty 
with Wall street than ,with the entire Southern Con- 
federacy," which meant that Wall street was speculating 



upon the needs and misfortunes of the nation. This was 
not all: Contractors for the supplies of the army and 
navy; "shoddy" productions of all kinds, found their 
way into the various departments. While your young 
men were fighting the battles for the preservation of the 
nation, these cormorants of greed and corruption were 
robbing the public treasury; the "sinews of war" were 
grudgingly siupplied at usurious rates by Wall street and 
"neutral nations" of Europe. 

From that time there has been one continuous tide of 
ruinous "prosperity" — I do not mean that the legiti- 
mate prosperity and increase of the wealth by natural 
development is ruinous — the prosperity born of specula- 
tion, of gambling in all the natural products of the 
country. 

The "strike" on the one hand, and the "lockout" 
on the other are the unfailing result of a system of cor- 
ruption of men in high places who have abused the con- 
dence reposed in them and have used their vast influ- 
ence to favor these acts and institutions of oppression. 

Anything that oppresses is wrong; and when a sys- 
tem becomes so oppressive that the government is 
obliged to take action against some of the foremost citi- 
zens of the country, it proves the existence of a great 
wrong. 

All the great nations of the past perished because of 
corruption; Egypt for a thousand year& led the world 
after her conquests, in the arts of peace; Rome, once 
the name that Paul quoted, "I too am a Roman citizen," 
became the plaything of a corrupt and dishonorable 
"System." 

We have the examples of all the nations of the 
earth. Wars of conquest may bring temporary victory, 
but no nation can permanently exist that expects to gain 
by aggrestsdve warfare the fair possessions of other na- 
tions. 

The days of crude and brutal force as the principal 
• factor in the "civilization" of the world are nearly over; 
and soon the nation will awaken from its long struggling 
dream of material power by "right of conquest" to that 
larger dream of the ideal nation whose Supreme Song 
is for that Liberty born of Justice." 

If your boasted Republic is anything more than a 
mere name, if the Liberty you prize so highly Is to be 
purified from the enslaving corruptions of partisan poli- 

6 



tics and financial exploitation, if the ballot is to remain 
(aye and be extended to the other half of creation — 
woman) if the Dove of Peace now circling over the na- 
tions of the earth — not finding a resting place from the 
contending floods of war and oppression — ^sihall finally 
rest over this fair land it will be when you shall have 
arisen to the bright ideals of the greater day, the larger 
Republic. 

The disarmament born of the federation of nations 
— of arbitration. 

The world is steadily rising to the ideal Republic of 
Plato, and the philosophers; to the Divine Brotherhood 
of Jesus and the great teachers. Not always will the 
sounds of the preparation for war be heard, not always 
will the people pay the terrible tribute of their life blood 
to foster the ambitions of kings and rulers. 

'Mie Spiritual Baptism that is poured out upon the 
world to-day means the onward march of the mental 
and moral forces of the people, the moral and spiritual 
to keep pace with the mental. 

The bondage of ignorance and fear is far greater 
than any material slavery; bigotry, fostering ignorance, 
has enslaved the spiritual nature and now that the "stone 
has been rolled away" from the sepulcher of physical 
death, the same Higher Powers are rolling the stones 
away from the sepulchers of fear, doubt and ignorance. 

There are thousands who hail this dawn of the new 
day; hundreds of thousands who gaze with longing eyes 
and who work with steadfast faith and courage to bring 
the promised dawn; it cannot be far off, for suoh as 
are ready in their heart to deal justly and kindly with 
their fellow men. No king or ruler of earth can bring 
it, no government can declare it, like the ideal Repub- 
lic of poets it must be the outgrowth of souls. 

Above your nation the great and wise and good of all 
past time watch, wait and inspire the daring and the true 
to higher deeds of hu/manity, nobler works of truth and 
righteousness. Over all the earth the ministering ones 
attend to teach siich minds as are ready to strengthen 
and uplift the faltering ones. 

Happy are they who have arisen from the selfish and 
narrow aims of personal ambition and greed and are 
working and waiting for the perfect day, the Birthday 
of Human Brotherhood. O^^ 



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